Firelands Tanking – 10M Baleroc

Baleroc stands before the gate to Sulfuron Keep, amidst a river of combustion that serves as the Sulfuron moat. The bridge to Ragnaros’s blistering chamber can only be crossed by those who find a way to put an end to this towering elemental monstrosity.

Baleroc is a fight that I’m pleasantly happy with. As in, as long as I remember to taunt, I don’t have to worry about ANYTHING else in the fight. This makes me happier than a cat in cream–you have NO IDEA. It sucks for the healers and DPS, but that’s not what I do, so anyway, on to the meat of the Baleroc fight! <.<

The Raid Group

This fight can be done with one (more healing intensive) or two tanks. The way you choose to do the fight is your guild’s choice. We choose the two tank method in TTGF, which means I will never see health pools of epicness (maybe for alt runs).

Group Makeup

Tanks

Protection Paladin – Decimation Tank

Protection Warrior – Inferno/Everything Else Tank

Healers

Discipline Priest

Restoration Druid

Restoration Shaman

DPS

Frost Death Knight

Balance Druid

Marksmanship Hunter

Frost Mage

Enhancement Shaman

Things to Note

This fight is incredibly easy on the tanks–the rest of the party, well, not so much. The DPS have to worry about rotations for Crystal soaking, the healers have to gather up Vital Spark stacks by healing the DPS soaking the crystals, and then turn and use their healing stacks to heal the tanks.

As I mentioned, isn’t it great to be a tank?😐

As a heads up, Decimating Strikes cannot be blocked, but they can be dodged or parried. Inferno blades can be blocked, dodged, AND parried. Keep this in mind should you choose to swap trinkets around/change up your buff food/etc.

Our Strat

I’m leaving out the DPS and healer duties. You can check out some of the other blogs linked on the Firelands Raid Strats page if you want DPS and healer perspectives.

Decimation tank (me) runs in and picks up Bale. I will continue tanking Bale until I have about 350K health (we started with keeping me below 300K, roughly 275K, and that just wasn’t pretty).

Once my health pool is established, my co-tank taunts off me and begins to gain stacks.

When Bale “readies his Decimation Blade,” I taunt and watch the cast animation. I will rotate between Ardent Defender (usually one use due to CD) and Divine Protection.

Eat your Decimating Strikes like a champ for 15 seconds (Rhidach mentions a taunt method on his WI post, but we usually just have me eat the blades) and enjoy your 4 second healing debuff (-90% healing, whee!).

Rinse and repeat on Decimation Blade warnings–there is really nothing more going on for this fight that you need to worry about.

Conclusion

I like this fight, but we know I’m slightly “off.” It’s fun to sit in vent and listen to the healers rotate and the DPS to call out stacks, and all my co-tank and I are doing is saying “taunt” and “taunting.” Consider it stress relief before going after Alys.

Don’t be surprised, we forgot to log this kill too <.< More screenshot action!

Paladin Notes

It may be worth dusting off your Avoidance set for this fight. Make sure you have your Glyph of Divine Protection ready for action.